Benjamin Franklin once said: “People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both.” In the present case, you have to insert the word “economic” in front of security, but the lesson still holds. If you lose the right to choose who governs you – or allow some greater authority to determine the limits of their power – what recourse do you have when the promises are broken and “security” becomes a prison?
There is a lot being written at the moment in papers and blogs and in the media generally on the subject of the EU.
The above, I found in the telegraph comments section. I find a most amazing paradox taking place before our eyes. On one hand we have the so called Arab spring. The people of a number of countries in the Middle East and North Africa are rebelling. There does not at the moment seem to be anything else behind this apart from the fact that they see that they are/were governed by dictators and that these dictators seemed to make themselves very rich at the expense of the people.
They looked across the street and saw democracy and more immediately important the ability with this democracy to change a government. The growth of the internet allowed them to see “across the street” in exactly the same way as the east Germans saw into West Germany all those years ago. All of which saw the serious decline in communism.
The paradox is now to be seen in the recent actions of Sarkosi and Merkle, heads of state of two of the largest and most powerful states within the EU.
Not only did they both seem to interfere recently in the internal affairs of another country, but they appeared to speak for political and financial enterties as well. Since when can either of them speak for the IMF, for example? How can they dictate who is Prime minister and what measures need to be taken in another country.
The EU seems also to be in a position where it is trying and has tried continually to expand it power base. All of which is without having been voted these powers.
The EU is changing into dictatorship while the Arabs are trying so desperately to change into democracy.
No comments:
Post a Comment